As You Were
by Dorus the Walrus
Summary: Another Rachel returns story. But in this one she receives a little help from the Doctor.
1. Prologue

**As You Were**

_Prologue_

Time Lords were not omnipotent. They were neither all-powerful nor all-knowing. But there was one thing that the Doctor _did_ know with complete certainty: the universe was a funny thing.

"So… what is this? The epilogue to your sob story?"

The Doctor blinked at the figure before him. She looked human, and no more than seventeen at that. She had blonde hair and was wearing nothing but a leotard. Her arms were crossed over her chest and she had a sneer across her face. She was arrogant, whatever she was.

"Hey!" He yelled. "Get out of my TARDIS! This is a no hitchhiking zone! And that goes for both brides and little girls!"

The girl dropped her arms and just stared at him. "What?" She asked, obviously not comprehending what he was raving about.

The Doctor, however, did not bother to answer her question. Twice in a very short period of time had random human females suddenly appearing in his TARDIS for no good reason and he was starting to get a little tired of it. He marched up to the girl, sonic screwdriver in hand, determined to figure out what sort of creature she was. However, the moment he aimed the device at her she disappeared. Not teleported, she just faded away as though she were nothing more than dust.

"Huh." The Doctor mumbled to himself. "Well, that was weird."

He liked weird.


	2. Chapter 1

**As You Were**

_Chapter One_

The Doctor hummed to himself as he tried to maneuver the TARDIS into the exact spot in space that he encountered the girl.

He had done everything he could think of to figure out what she had been, how she had gotten on board, why she had disappeared. None of his tests had revealed anything. But perhaps there was something special about this part of space in itself. If he could just get to that spot…

"What is going on?"

The Doctor's head snapped up and grinned. There she was, standing in the middle of his console room looking perplexed and off-center.

"Hello!" He chirped. "I'm the Doctor. Who're you? And how, if I might ask, were you able to get onto my ship?"

The girl, however, said nothing. She just stood there, barefoot and almost nude, like he had grown a second head.

"You're really not him, are you?" She asked.

The Doctor shrugged, confused. "I don't know. Maybe? Who's he?" He couldn't help but think about what an odd question that was. Certainly not the sort of question most humans would ask if they suddenly appeared in a spaceship.

The girl didn't bother to answer his question. She ran her hands over the gold structure of the TARDIS, drawing them back to look at her hands, before returning to her compulsive touching. It was like she had never experienced the sense of touch before. It made the Doctor a little nervous to see her touch his precious TARDIS in such a way. "Hey, you want to tell me your name?"

The girl jerked her head up to look at him, but he couldn't help but feel as though she weren't really seeing him. "It's Rachel." Her voice sounded far away. She walked over to him and ran her hand along his jacket sleeve. "This is a nice suit." She said. "All natural fibers."

"Oh, I'm glad you like it! It's my favorite. So, it's Rachel? You're human then?"

The Doctor saw a strange look go across her face, like she was waking up from a dream. As if she were suddenly coming to her senses, a guarded and closed expression fell over her face. She looked the Doctor up and down as she cocked an eyebrow at him. "Yes. And what about you?"

"What? You don't think I'm human, too?" The Doctor asked, a teasing grin on his face. Definitely something off about her.

Rachel gave a smile in return, but not nearly as friendly. She narrowed her eyes at him in suspicion. "Just because you look human doesn't mean you are."

"Ooh, very good. I'm a Time Lord, actually."

Rachel blinked. "What's a Time Lord?"

"Oh…" The Doctor trailed off, not really wanting to have to explain the Time Lords to this strange girl. It would be stupid to discuss something so personal to someone he wasn't even sure if he could trust. "Just another inhabitant of the universe."

The suspicion never left her face, but she seemed satisfied to leave it at that. "So, if this is your ship can you take me to Earth?"

"Weeeell… yes, but first I want you to tell me how you got onto this ship. You're not the first person to somehow appear inside a ship while its hurtling through space, but it is rather difficult. Not to mention, the way you disappeared or the fact that you arrive only when I pass through a particular spot in space. Why is that?"

Rachel shrugged. "No idea. I didn't do anything."

"What were you doing just before you came here?"

"Nothing. I swear, I wasn't doing anything. I was just on Earth minding my own business."

The Doctor couldn't help the blatant suspicion from appearing on his face. "So, you often just 'do nothing' in a leotard?"

The girl huffed and rolled her eyes. "I was getting ready for my gymnastics class."

"Gymnastics, right." The Doctor muttered. He could tell she was lying. She wasn't just some normal human girl, whatever she would like him to believe. Before he could comment on matter, however, the TARDIS gave a sudden lurch. The two were thrown to the ground as the ship began to shake and spark.

With a sudden thud the TARDIS stopped and everything went quiet. "What was that?" Rachel demanded. "Why did it do that?"

"Not sure. Let's see where we are." The Doctor got to his feet with the girl trailing behind him. He threw opened the doors to reveal a strange alien planet. A dreamy look came over his face as he looked out, the same sort of look he always got whenever he visited someplace new. It was a sandy sort of planet, hot and dry and gray and beautiful.

"What is this place?" Rachel asked as they stepped outside. Despite being a 'normal human girl' she seemed rather nonchalant with the whole experience. In fact, she even looked irritated and a little bored.

"Don't know, that's what makes it fun." The Doctor said, turning to her. "Oh, come on, cheer up! You're on an alien planet! Aren't you excited or curious?"

The girl just clenched and unclenched her hands. She looked unhappy. "I need to get back to Earth." Noticing that the Doctor was looking at her hands she quickly crossed them over her chest. "Why does your ship look like a telephone booth?"

"Uh, it's not a telephone booth it's a police box. Honestly!"

"What's a police box?" She muttered. Seeing the look of disbelief on his face she quickly amended her sentence. "Just forget I asked if you're going to go into lecture mode." She took a few steps away from him, gazing at the alien landscape. Looking off into the distance, she jerked her head in the direction of a sand dune. "What are those?" She asked.

The Doctor turned to see a cluster of glinting metal marching towards them. "Capture the Doctor and the human." They chanted to themselves.

"Oh, no no no no… This isn't good. They're Cybermen. We have to get back to the TARDIS. Now." The Doctor turned to scramble back to the ship, but stopped when he noticed that Rachel hadn't moved from her spot.

"Are they dangerous?" She asked. There a hard edge to her voice that he didn't like.

"Very. If they capture us they'll turn us into one of them. A brain inside a metal casing with no emotions, no imagination. Just a drone. Now, come on." He reached over and grabbed her arm, trying to pull her away. He didn't trust her, didn't know what she was or what her intentions were, but he didn't want to see her get hurt either. He'd do anything to make sure that didn't happen. But Rachel deftly twisted out of his grip and stood her ground.

"Do they have weapons? Guns? Dracon beams?"

_What? Dracon beams?_ "If they grab you they will electrocute you. They've got enough voltage in their grip to kill a human in seconds."

For the first time since they met the girl truly smiled at him. It was a feral and dangerous grin. "What about elephants?" She asked. And then she changed.

With the Cybermen only a few feet away, Rachel had become an adult bull elephant. Turning more swiftly than the Doctor would have thought possible for an elephant, Rachel charged straight into the band of Cybermen, crushing them with her bulk. She showed no mercy as she systematically destroyed each and every Cyberman.

It was then when the Doctor realized just who exactly was this girl.


	3. Chapter 2

**As You Were**

_Chapter Two_

"Rachel! Stop!"

The elephant's foot was poised over the head of one of the defeated Cybermen. She had effectively destroyed it. There was no way it was ever going to get back up again. The Doctor saw no point in continuing the needless destruction. For one horrible moment the giant gray foot continued to hover above the broken machine before placing it back down on the ground. A few seconds later the elephant shifted back into the human girl.

Rachel smirked at him.

"I know who you are." The Doctor said tersely. That wiped the grin from her face. "And I know that you're dead."

"Well, obviously I'm not." She snapped. "I'm standing right here. I can touch and I can move and I can think. That all points to not being dead."

The Doctor shook his head. "You died back in 1999. Nine years ago. In the war against the Yeerk Empire. Look at yourself. It's 2008. If you had survived you would be twenty-five years old now. You haven't aged a bit."

At that Rachel's face seemed to crumble in on itself. For a second the Doctor felt his hearts seize with guilt, thinking that he had made her cry. But she didn't. Taking a few deep breaths she composed herself and gave the Doctor a hard look.

"I know. I know that. But we won, right? Everything we did… everything I did… did we win?" She asked. Her voice shook.

The Doctor nodded. "Yeah. You won." He said softly, but he couldn't help but think at what price. Rachel had been a child when the war had broken out in the States. A girl of thirteen. But she and her friends had fought and killed. There was no other choice. And she had died because of it. Even though he knew it wasn't his fault he couldn't help but feel guilty for not being there. How could he not when she had the body of sixteen year old girl and the eyes of a world-weary warrior?

Rachel folded her legs underneath her and sat in the middle of her destruction in the sand, breathing deeply, trying to regain her center. At that moment she reminded the Doctor of Jenny. A soldier, young and blonde. He wanted to help her.

"Nobody else died, right?" She asked suddenly, jerking her head up to look at him. "None of the other Animorphs? I was the only one?"

The Doctor grimaced. How could he possible explain what had happen to her friends? "A few years ago something happened. What… I'm not sure. Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill disappeared while searching for the last Yeerk Blade ship… somehow… Jake, Tobias, and Marco went out looking for him and never returned."

As the Doctor talked Rachel's expression carefully shifted from hopeful into a neutral look. Empty. Hard. When the Doctor finished she nodded mutely.

"But Cassie is still alive and living in Maine. She has a son now." He hoped that bit of news would give her something to hold on to, but there was no reaction.

Finally she looked back up at him. "How do you know so much about me and the Animorphs?"

"Weeell… as a Time Lord I can not only travel to different worlds and galaxies, but I can also move through time. I was actually there at your first battle. A Bug fighter knocked my TARDIS into the Earth and I was captured. Almost had a Yeerk put in my head, but then you showed up." He smiled at her.

She grinned back at him, a strange glint in her eye. "You can travel through time? Why didn't you say so? You can take me back to that last battle. I can save myself! I can stop Tobias and the others from going after Ax! I can warn Ax about the Blade ship!"

The Doctor shook his head. "No, no, it doesn't work that way. Some things are in flux, some things I can change. But some things I can't. Those things that are fixed must happen and must always happen. Your life and the lives of your friends cannot be changed."

Rachel snarled at him before wrenching herself to her feet. "Nothing is fixed. Nothing is ever fixed! You just won't do it because you're a coward!"

"I can't do anything! There are rules!"

"Look at me!" Rachel screamed. "I'm supposed to be dead, but here I am! So much for your stupid rules!"

The Doctor opened his mouth to scream back at the girl when the broken voice of one of the Cybermen filtered through. "Andalite… bandit…" It hummed.

The Doctor and Rachel gave each other a look before dropping down beside the broken piece of machinery. The Doctor quickly pulled out his sonic screwdriver, careful not to aim it at Rachel for fear of a repeat of last time, and opened the Cyberman's head. Inside was not the usual human brain, but a dying Yeerk.

"I thought you said these things had a human brain." She asked. There was a hard edge to her voice as she stared down at what had once been - and still was to her - the enemy.

"Apparently they've decided to branch out." He stuck his tongue between his teeth as he examined the machine and Yeerk. "The question is why?"

"No," Rachel snapped. "The question is are there more of them and how do we stop them?"

The Doctor shot her a look. "There are very few Yeerks left in the universe. They're an endangered species. This... unification with the Cybermen could just be an attempt to survive without enslaving another people."

Rachel couldn't have looked more uncaring if she had tried. "They kept repeating how they wanted to capture us. Does that sound peaceful to you?" Her eyes suddenly widened as she realized something. "In fact, they said 'capture the Doctor'. They called you by your title."

The Doctor frowned. "Name. Not title. The Doctor is my name."

"That's a stupid name."

"Well, you're not shy, are you?"

"Anyway," She carried on. "They want you for something and they want you alive. We need to find out for what."

There was a mischevious look in her eye and the two of them couldn't help but grin at each other, not with the thought of another dangerous adventure looming ahead.


	4. Chapter 3

**As You Were**

_Chapter 3_

The Doctor grinned as the wind swept through his air, lightly bouncing bareback in the seat of the racehorse. Oh yes, this was the perfect way to travel across the sand dunes. He made a mental note to make sure his next companion could change into a horse at will too. It was such a useful skill, after all.

_Stop smiling. I can feel it._ Rachel's grumbled reply resounded in his head as she galloped along the trail the Cybermen had left in the sand.

The Doctor's smile only became larger as he leaned his head back to soak up the sun's rays.

_So… do you have any idea how I came back from the dead?_ Rachel asked. Not timidly, never timid, but it was definitely quieter than the usual confident and authoritative sound of her voice.

The Doctor looked down at her mane and frowned. "Hmm… Not sure, actually. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, including the energy that is your lifeforce."

_I don't understand. Do you mean my soul?_

"Sure, if you want to call it that. Anyway, as I said, this energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be transformed into something else. Your atoms had disassembled themselves upon your death and, for some reason, reassembled themselves when it came into contact with my TARDIS. The TARDIS has enough power to do the job, but I have no idea why it did it, or how, or why your atoms were in that particular part of space when they should be on Earth."

Rachel didn't say anything to that, but continued her rapid trot. The Doctor didn't even realize, though, lost in his own musings and theories.

"It would also explain why you disappeared when I aimed the sonic screwdriver at you. The screwdriver caused whatever tenuous glue that holds your atoms together to fall apart."

_Are you saying that I could basically fall apart at any moment and go back to being... well, _nothing_?_

The Doctor cringed. "I honestly don't know, but we'll have to be careful regardless."

They fell silent once more and the Doctor began thinking about the question that Rachel had asked. There was a reason why the TARDIS had reassembled her; after all, people - the Doctor included - moved through the remains of the once-living all the time, and yet the TARDIS had never done anything like this before. Once the Doctor got to the bottom of this should he allow Rachel's atoms to disassemble themselves once again or should he try to keep her "alive". He didn't even know if she was technically living now. The Doctor didn't have time to dwell on it anymore as he was pulled back into reality when Rachel came to halt. He looked down over the dunes to see the remains of a small glittering city, the white metal buildings nearly blinded the two as the sunlight reflected off of them. There looked to be twenty Cybermen marching up and down the deserted streets.

"This must be where they're hiding out. There'll be factory inside there."

_Where they make more Cybermen?_

"Yes, so be careful." The Doctor commanded as he slid off Rachel's horse morph.

She transformed back into her human body and grinned at him. "Careful is my middle name." She chirped.

"Right, because you were the epitome of carefulness the last time we encountered Cybermen." The Doctor rolled his eyes.

Suddenly alarms began to sound throughout the complex. The Doctor and Rachel jerked themselves to full attention, ready for an attack. But the Cybermen didn't even so much as glance in their direction. They hadn't been noticed. The alarm was for something else.

"Elfangor!?" Rachel cried out.

The Doctor looked down to see the Cybermen dragging along a struggling adult Andalite male. He looked battle-worn. He could see that his tail was dragging along limply in the sand, bent at an odd angle near the tip. Every time he would attempt to morph the Cybermen would deliver a debilitating shock.

"No, it's Ax! It's Ax!" Rachel crowed even as she began to morph.

"Rachel, you can't just rush in there!" The Doctor cried but she was already at the halfway point between human and a 1200-lb grizzly bear.

The Doctor tried to block her path but she just barreled into him, knocking him into the ground as she charged across the sand. If the Cybermen hadn't realized their presence then, they did now. However, unlike the ones before, these were armed. The Doctor clunched his chest and wheezed as he struggled to his feet once more, watching as Rachel flew into battle.

Rachel saw the Cybermen raise their guns before jerking quickly to the side and behind a building before the blasts could reach her. Unlike the last group of Cybermen she had encountered, these had weapons. Belatedly she realized that a frontal assault was not the way to go. But she hadn't been thinking; she just saw Ax wounded and captured and had reacted. She needed to demorph and choose another approach. Rachel looked up to see the Doctor making his way towards her, trying to climb over the dunes as quickly as he could as she began to revert to her true body.

The Doctor began yelling as the Cybermen neared the edge of the building. Too long, it was taking Rachel too long to demorph. They were going to reach her and kill her.

"Hey! I'm the Doctor! I'm the one you want! Over here!" The Doctor cried out, hoping to draw the Cybermen way from Rachel.

It worked. The Cybermen stopped their approach to face the Doctor. "Primary operative override. Capture the Doctor."

The Doctor jerked to stop, nearly sliding on the sand as the Cybermen began their advance towards him. "That's right! Here's your primary operative!" The Doctor turned and began to run in the direction opposite of Rachel.

Rachel flicked her antenna around her as she completed her next morph. She couldn't see what was happening, but she knew the Doctor was alright. He was loud enough for her cockroach senses to make out what he was saying. Safe in the knowledge that the Cybermen would not harm him, for whatever purpose, she began to search out Ax.

It took her a few minutes but she finally picked up on what she realized as the soft plop of hooves against the sand. She followed it until they entered one of the silver metal buildings when Ax came to a stop.

"Prepare the upgrade. You will become Cyberman." The electronic voices boomed. Rachel twitched her antennas wishing she could see. Then she would know what kind of odds she was facing.

_Ax! Ax, can you hear me?_ She called out in private thoughtspeak.

The reply was hesitant. _Reluctantly, yes._

_Reluctantly?_ She couldn't help but sound indignant.

_Obviously the isolation and heat of this planet has robbed me of my perception of reality._

_You are **not** crazy! It's me! Really me! I can't explain it right now, but you have to trust me!_

Again there was a pause. _Alright._

_How many Cybermen are there?_

_In this room? Six._

_Any good place for me to demorph?_

_Go to your left. There appears to be some sort of storage room. You will be able to tell you are inside by the darkness._ Rachel identified a cacophony of metallic screeching. Something had just been turned on. _Hurry._ Ax said, almost as an afterthought.

Rachel turned and began to race across the floor. As she scurried along she called out, _You know, you're really cute all grown up._

_Yes. Several females that I had known from school had expressed the same sentiment._

Rachel groaned as she became engulfed in darkness. Jackpot. _You're starting to sound like Marco._


	5. Chapter 4

Author's Note – Just to let ya'll know, I've cleaned up the previous chapters a little, made them flow better, and included some new bits of information.

**As You Were**

_Chapter 4_

Ax attempted to dig his hooves into the sleek metal floor as the Cybermen began to push him toward the powered-up converter. The gesture was fruitless, however; his hooves provided no traction and the Cybermen merely shoved him along. This was it. After everything that had happened this was how he was going to die. To become one of these metal humans was even more shameful than becoming a Controller.

However, he couldn't help but keep one of his eyes trained on the storage room. He may have fallen into complete madness, but his apparent insanity was the only thing that gave him hope. To his utter relief, Rachel did not disappoint.

The Cybermen were not agile enough for the Hork-Bajir blades. Rachel swung her wrist blade down in a high arc, slicing off the arms of the Cybermen that had been holding him hostage. Ax kicked back with his front legs in an effort to move backwards against the slippery floor as Rachel continued her assault. He grimaced in pain as his broken tail became caught in between his own unbalanced feet. Finally getting clear of the battle, Ax began to morph. Watching Rachel as he began to shift into human he knew the fight would be over before he would finish. The Cybermen were simply too uncoordinated and stiff jointed to be much of a threat to a Hork-Bajir.

When Ax felt his stalk eyes and front legs shrivel up and disappear he knew that he was almost complete. Looking up he could see Rachel – still in her Hork-Bajir morph – watching him carefully with the empty metal remains of the Cybermen around her.

_Huh, your human morph hasn't aged at all._ Rachel commented.

"No. It wouldn't. Woo. Woouldn't."

He could hear Rachel laugh in his head. _And the weirdest thing is I actually miss you playing with sounds_. She sounded almost nostalgic. _Hurry up and demorph. We're going to need your tail in top form. There is still a ton of Cybermen outside._

Ax nodded his head, but before he could begin he saw Rachel starting to shift back into human. "Why are you changing back?" Ax demanded.

"It's not me!" Rachel exclaimed just as the two tiny mounds of flesh that were her lips appeared. Ax watched in horror as the half-human Rachel doubled over. "I don't know what's causing this!" She sounded utterly exhausted, as though the energy was being sapped out of her.

"You are disappearing!" Ax pointed to her hands, the last part of her to return to normal. Rachel held them up and Ax could see a faint outline of the converter where he should have only been able to see pink skin. Rachel looked at him with terrified eyes.

"I've only just come back!" She cried out. "They can't take me away now! It's not fair! It's not fair! I have to save Tobias!"

Ax collapsed to his knees beside her and, hesitating for only a second, he gripped her shoulders with his human hands. He hoped it provided some comfort to her. It comforted him to touch her, to be able to finally prove to himself that she was alive. "How did this happen?" Ax demanded. "How did you come back? If we know how then perhaps we can stop you from disappearing."

Rachel just shook her head. "I don't know. We have to find the Doctor. He'll know what to do."

AYWAYWAYW

The Doctor ran away from the building that Rachel had scurried into as a whole fleet of Cybermen marched after him. He twisted through the metal city, taking a sharp corner only to run into more Cybermen. He came to halt, his arms windmilling beside him, as the Cybermen leveled their guns at him.

"Oh… hello…" The Doctor muttered.

He jerked his back around as he heard more guns training themselves on him to see that the group of Cybermen he had been running from had caught up with him. He was trapped.

"You will come with us." The Cybermen droned and with that they began marching the Doctor towards the largest of all the glinting silver buildings in the city. The Doctor spared a glance behind him. He knew that Rachel could handle anything the Cybermen threw at her, but he hoped she was alright anyway and that she had been able to save her friend in time.

The Cybermen led the Doctor inside the giant dome structure. Glancing around he could see the ancient remnants of whatever people that had once inhabited the city. Broken pottery and scrolls half turned into dust littered the floor. He didn't know who these long-gone people were or how they had died, but if the Cybermen had something to do with it then there would be hell to pay.

"All hail the CyberKing!"

The Doctor jerked his head up, half-expecting to see Mercy Hartigan. What he was confronted with was a more horrifying sight. It was a frightening mishmash of human and Cyberman parts: human flesh interwoven with robotic wires, a Cyberman head sitting atop of red muscled human shoulders stripped bare of skin, and a mostly human torso with its insides exposed to reveal the inner workings of a machine. Just looking at the creature made the Doctor feel violently ill.

"Doctor." The CyberKing acknowledged. The voice hummed mechanically but underneath it the Doctor could still make out what had once been a man's tenor voice.

The Doctor became enflamed at seeing what the Cybermen had reduced this human to. He marched up to the CyberKing, furious and vengeful. "That's right." The Doctor all but yelled. "I'm the Doctor. What is it that you want from me?!"

"Revenge."

The Doctor waved his arms in front of the CyberKing. "Well, here I am! Have at it! Come on! What's the matter?! You had to drag me all the way here first?!"

The CyberKing held up a hand. "You misunderstand."

The Doctor's raving came to dead stop as he stared at the hand. A human gesture, a human statement. "What?" He asked, looking at this creature. Is it possible that it was more human than Cyberman? More human than Mercy Hartigan even?

"We do not desire revenge against you… we need your help in attaining our revenge." The CyberKing went on to explain. "Allow me to introduce myself: I am Esplin 8466, the CyberKing. I am part Cyberman, part human, and part Yeerk."

The Doctor just blinked. "What?" He asked again.


	6. Chapter 5

**As You Were**

"Revenge against what?" The Doctor asked.

"Against the One." The CyberKing explained. "Most of my people have become enthralled by this… _thing_. It has completely taken over the Blade Ship with the Yeerks as its willing slaves, intent on spreading its worship throughout the universe. A few of us, recognizing the danger in following this creature, abandoned the ship and crashed onto this planet. Here we found the remains of what had once been an army of Cybermen… an army that _you_ destroyed." The CyberKing tapped his finger against his helm. "I can read its files and circuitry as well as any creature's memory. It's all here. The battle at Canary Wharf… A few Cybermen were able to escape your destruction and fled here, even those that were not completely formed." Here the CyberKing gestured to his own body.

"And you infested them?" The Doctor's voice was hollow. He didn't know what to make of this. There was no good guy or bad guy. The Yeerks and the Cybermen were equally terrible. "What about the Andalite?" The Doctor demanded, suddenly remembering that there was at least one decent person (other than himself and Rachel) that was also stranded on this planet.

"The Andalite had been sent to murder us, but had been absorbed by the One instead. After copying its body the One sealed it up inside the Blade Ship, slowly stealing its lifeforce. We rescued it from certain death." The CyberKing paused as though he expected the Doctor to be proud of at least this. The Doctor thought that he would have been more sympathetic to the CyberKing and his Yeerk/Cybermen hybrids if he didn't insist on referring to Aximili as an 'it'. "We thought that it would be beneficial to keep it as an ally, but it refused to cooperate and ran away after we upgraded."

Despite the revulsion the Doctor felt at the twisted merging of Yeerk and Cyberman, he listened to their plight and grew worried at their descriptions of the One. He had never heard of the creature before, but it was definitely something that needed to be stopped. "If I help you then you have to promise not to try to upgrade anyone else – including the Andalite! I will take you to an uninhabited planet where you will live in peace. No more attempts at conquering the universe or enslaving other people." He demanded. The CyberKing hesitated for a moment before nodding his head.

The Doctor grinned at him. "Brilliant. Let's go pick up Rachel and Aximili."

AYWAYWAYW

Ax, now in his true form, gripped Rachel by the arms as he slowly led her out of the building. His hold on her was tenuous at best; he lacked the upper body strength that humans possessed and knew that if Rachel lost all energy and collapsed he would have to change to his human morph. It would leave him defenseless but it would be the only way to carry her out.

Luckily though, Rachel seemed to be gathering more and more strength with every step she took. "I think I'm good enough to stand on my own now." She stated. It was obvious from the tone of her voice that she was embarrassed by the whole thing. Ax had gotten quite good at reading human emotions since his time with the Animorphs.

_Are you certain?_

She nodded and Ax didn't press the issue. He just let her go. Her steps were a little unsteady, but then when was a human ever truly secure when they insisted on walking on just two legs? He decided not to comment on the way she seemed to sway; Rachel was a warrior and prideful and he knew from personal experience that such people didn't like having their faults pointed out to them. Besides, her steps were growing more confident as they exited the building.

"Rachel!"

Ax swiveled a stalk eye to see a strange human male running towards them. Although Ax would say that he was fairly desensitized to the eccentricities of humans, he found himself oddly put off by this particular human. There was something not quite right about him. His instincts were proven correct when he saw a group of Cybermen marching calmly behind him, including the CyberKing himself. They were clearly following the human on his orders.

"Doctor?!" Rachel yelled. "What do you think you're doing?" She seemed completely recovered now.

"Now, don't get angry-"

"I'm already angry!" Rachel snapped. "What are you doing getting all friendly with them?! They're Yeerks!"

"And we're going to help them." This 'Doctor' proclaimed. "There is this creature called the One that seems to have ensnared their fellow Yeerks. It even had you in its grip once." The Doctor turned to look at the Andalite. "Do you remember the One? Do you remember the Yeerks rescuing you?"

Ax's expression darkened. _I vaguely recall the Yeerks_ – here it was said with much more derision then the Doctor could muster – _pulling me into an escape pod. But I would hardly consider it a rescue since they were simply planning on using me as a tool._

"But what about the One?" The Doctor pressed.

_I confess I do not remember much from my captivity. I just remember… there was a lot of pain._ Ax finally admitted after several minutes of silence.

The Doctor gave him a sympathetic look and nodded. "There's a chance that the other Animorphs were also captured by the One. It would explain why they suddenly disappeared."

Both Rachel and Ax nervously fidgeted at that. Neither one wanted to help the enemy, but they couldn't abandon their friends either. "Fine." Rachel finally said. "We'll help. We promise we won't attack the Cybermen in their sleep or anything."

"Cybermen don't sleep. They recharge." The Doctor said with a grin. "Come on. Let's get back to the TARDIS." And with that the Doctor bounded off with the CyberKing and a few other Cybermen trailing behind him. Rachel and Ax followed suit.

_Who exactly is this Doctor?_ Ax asked in private thoughtspeak to Rachel. The manic nature of the Doctor unnerved Ax, as well as the casual way he talked about Yeerks, Cybermen, and the Animorphs.

"He says he's a Time Lord… whatever that is. I just suddenly appeared in his ship. He said that the TARDIS – that's his ship – somehow managed to reassemble my atoms, making me not-dead. Although, I don't know if that means I'm truly alive either." She sounded disturbed.

Ax couldn't help but to turn his whole head until he was facing Rachel. _A Time Lord?_ The Andalite asked. _There definitely seems to be a theme with you and demi-gods. The Ellimist, Crayak, and now Time Lords._

"What do you mean?" Rachel demanded. "The Doctor is a demi-god?"

_Supposedly,_ Ax said. _According to legend, they are a whole order of demi-gods dedicated to watching time and meddling with its flow. I would be careful, Rachel. They have their own agenda and are not to be trusted._


End file.
